The Asian Power Hour

I was fortunate enough to spend some time talking with the folks at the Electronic Arts Branch in Taipei, Taiwan, this winter. After looking at the state of gaming in Taiwan, some key differences arose concerning the nature of the work of EA Taiwan as an international branch as compared to their stateside counterpart.

EA Taiwan is divided primarily into 3 sections, consisting of:

PR (Including Sales and Marketing)
Localization
Finance

No base design or development takes place externally outside of the United States, and the point of the Taiwan office is to provide support and culturalization for EA products locally. This differs from other branches of EA in Asia such as EA Japan, EA Shanghai, and EA Singapore for reasons that will be explored later. Brand Awareness in such lines such as the EA Sports Brand continues to be one of the big goals of EA Taiwan.

EA Taiwan is also currently a 3rd party publisher and distributor in Taiwan for the PC, PS2, and Xbox 360 platforms. Companies such as Square Enix used EA Taiwan for their distribution needs until as recently as Final Fantasy X-2. Titles such as Capcom’s Devil May Cry 3 are still being published and distributed by EA Taiwan’s vertical infrastructure throughout the country. By owning not only the distribution and publishing facilities locally in Taiwan, EA Taiwan serves as more of a publisher and distributor for hire than as a true game development office.

However, the main work of EA Taiwan is the localization, or more aptly culturalization of EA titles for the Taiwan market. This includes not only changes to the game itself, but also marketing and branding. For example, In The Sims 2 for the PC, the front of the box has an Asian woman standing in a stereotypical kung fu pose which was removed in the Taiwan release of the game, changes to the UI were also implemented to mirror more common popular game genres in Taiwan. EA Taiwan also changes many of their sports games to promote popular Taiwanese sports celebrities, such as changing the cover of MVP Baseball to that of popular Taiwanese NY Yankees pitcher Wang Jian Ming, who is seen as a National Hero in Taiwan. There are also changes to roster and gameplay to reflect Taiwan’s personal take on baseball. This is in contrast to Sony’s MLB Baseball series which undergoes similar cosmetic changes in Japan, bu

In games such as Sim City 4, custom landmark buildings such as the living city mall and the Taipei 101 were added to the palette of buildable structures, a customized playable map of Taiwan, simulated Taipei city traffic, etc. These changes were not implemented or built at EA Taiwan though, what happens instead is that EA Taiwan recommends design changes and these in turn are evaluated by the US dev team and then implemented in the US and sent back to Taiwan. This EA Taiwan title is available to play for the PC in English if anybody is interested, just contact me. Albertya at usc dot edu.

EA Taiwan’s strong presence is required for some issues that have plagued other companies in Asia such as Nintendo, who has yet to open an office in the Taiwan area. This is due to the effort to not combat piracy, but to retain a strong local awareness of the EA brand as a “for Taiwan” game company.

Some things that EA Taiwan does with the help of the main US branches is to aim for same day worldwide releases on their titles both physically and through EA Link, Electronic Art’s parallel to Steam. To combat piracy, limited edition collector’s packages which are more sought after by the much larger collecter fanbase in Asia , and also digital community features such as custom manageable guilds similar to the online linkshell features for Final Fantasy XI and the new Armory feature for the World of Warcraft.

It’s interesting to note that almost all EA releases that come out in Taiwan, and also in Asia, excluding Japan are Multi-Language builds. This means that on the same day that you could purchase a game such as Need for Speed Carbon in the United States, with one language option, you could purchase one in Taiwan with English, French, Chinese, etc. all built in already. However, interestingly enough, this is not a decision by these individual branches, but by the head EA office in the United States.

Looking at the popularity of US games in Taiwan, the most popular Titles for the 2006 Year in Taiwan were:

Need for Speed Carbon
NBA ‘07
Battlefield 2142
The Sims 2

However, the best selling EA title in Taiwan is still Command and Conquer, with the EA branches in Asia expecting very high sales for the new Command and Conquer 3 title coming out soon. Surprisingly, a similar title that has all but consumed Korea, Starcraft was not nearly as popular as Command and Conquer in Taiwan. The US developed game with one of the biggest impacts in Taiwan is Blizzard’s Diablo, with infitessimal clones of the same type of game such as Blade and Sword, and Seal of Evil (Both later released in the United States), polished with an Asian style released year after year.

One interesting thing going on among the EA branches in Asia is the development of a yet unannounced Massively Multiplayer Online game. After seeing current trends in online gaming in Asia, EA Shanghai and EA Singapore are currently working on a Free to Play MMO for the Asian market with Eastern themes (3 Kingdoms, Kung-Fu, Wushu, etc.). It looks like this game will be following the microtransaction system to generate income. This game is not slated for a US release as of this time.

As far as the online game base in Asia (excluding Japan), in order of most gamers are:

Korea
China (including HK)
Taiwan
Thailand
Phillipines

Moving on to consoles, several issues exist with consoles in Taiwan at the moment, including the expensive nature of the systems compared to Taiwan’s current GDP and the worry of piracy, something that Taiwan has come to be an expert in ever since the days of the 8-bit Nintendo.

Xbox 360-The total install base in Taiwan is currently around 30,000, with Microsoft shelling out big bucks for popular bands such as Mayday (五月天) to promote the system and the low number of games designed for Asian gamers. This is changing however with a plethora of Japanese Developers and Asian Developers becoming Interested in the system. There are a surprising amount of Taiwanese developers for the original Xbox, such as Xpec, and also the makers of Iron Phoenix that are interested in making games of the new system.

Playstation 2-Has the largest userbase in Taiwan, however, the easily pirateable nature of the PS2 has always been a problem. Lately there is a drop in the userbase as the PC becomes the gaming machine of choiee in Taiwan. Most shops in Taiwan, outside of central Taipei openly sell bootleg Playstation 2 games.

Playstation 3-EA believes that the future winner in the console wars in Taiwan will be the Playstation 3. This is due in part to the Blu-Ray player, with Taiwan being an early adopter of new technologies and the large Sony presence in the country. However, PS3 is currently the worst selling system in Taiwan due to the lack of software that interests the gaming public and the large price point. All around Taiwan during the release of the system, there was never any real shortage of the system, and it was easily found unbundled.

Gamecube-Not just for EA, but in general, the Gamecube has been dead in the water for quite a while because of its' lack of games, but also being harder to pirate.

Nintendo Wii-EA Taiwan is interested in the Wii because of the new potential of the playstyles that is opened up by the system, but there have not been any EA Taiwan announced games for the system. It is interesting to note however, that EA Japan is working on an independent project for the Wii, a version of the Sims that may also take advantage of the character created Mii’s. The interface so far resembles the UI for the PC version of the Sims unsurprisingly. As of this moment, there is no Asia release of the Wii, and Japanese Wii systems are being sold at nearly Playstation 3 prices in Taiwan, with a complete shortage of the system nationwide.

Nintendo DS-Possibly the best selling system in Taiwan, however, it is not a major source of income of EA because of the highly prevalent pirate community in Taiwan for the Nintendo DS. Not only is this system the easiest to pirate, but it is also the cheapest to do so. Store shopkeepers will openly advertise pirate bundles when selling this system.

Sony PSP-Selling about 1 for every 8 Nintendo DS’s in the Taiwan market, Sony’s PSP system also suffers the same problem as their firmware is constantly being hacked by Taiwan’s pirate community (This is more of an Asia-wide problem, same for the DS), but the lack of unique games and the much more expensive hardware leads to poor sales regardless.

As for future plans for EA Taiwan, Command and Conquer 3 is the biggest anticipation at the moment, and plans to ensure a worldwide release are being worked on. It will be interesting to see how the different branches of EA will cooperate, I am especially interested in seeing new IP for EA in Asia like their yet unannounced MMO and seeing how EA plans to handle independent development of new titles in Asia.